Sally Carr
Dried Flowers
I need gloves for acanthus spinossus.
Nigella damascena, love-in-a-mist,
has frail papery bladders though, wisped
with hairs. Incredibly delicate.
But after two years, maybe more,
I can still rattle their tiny
dolls’ toys, marvel at snappable,
insect-leg stems. Not like those
of papaver somniferum, the opium poppy,
straight and stiff as knitting needles.
These are the tough guys. Bald heads,
shaved backs-and-sides with flat, funky
top-knots, skins thickened and hardened.
They’re still smuggling their contraband:
even now would rapidly take hold,
flare into our own Golden Triangle
in the back garden, if I pierced
each airtight drum, lightly shook it.
Packed with such varied cargoes, brittle
as thatch, the whole vaseful rustles,
crackles at the slightest touch.
Even the huge cardoon picked in July
and still wafting honey is like tinder
waiting for the match, bushfire dry.
Page(s) 18
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The